The Golden Girl (14 page)

T
he night before Madison was due to confront Bing, she couldn’t sleep.

In the first place, she was emotionally exhausted by the relentless coverage of her death. And she was tormented by guilt at seeing her father—and Ashley, and even her mother, who normally could drive her insane just by being on the same continent—all torn to pieces by the funeral. The FBI told her that they couldn’t risk placing the people she loved in jeopardy by revealing she was alive. Their grief had to look real—the better for the confrontation with Bing. They even provided her father and mother with ashes, which were buried in the family plot in Rye, New York. Bing served as a pallbearer, which infuriated Madison. She had never been particularly close to him. After all, the Pruitts were known for their stoicism. It wasn’t like she’d grown up with warm, fuzzy memories of him.

Then there was lower-key, but still in the papers, coverage of Charlie’s funeral, attended by old pals from Vietnam, as well as her father and other people from Pruitt & Pruitt who had gotten to know Charlie over the years.

Madison tossed and turned restlessly. She missed John. She missed talking to him. She missed sleeping next to him. She wanted to go back to the life she was trying to create.

Finally, she gave up and went out to the kitchenette where Troy was already drinking coffee.

“What’s your excuse?” she asked.

“Hmm?” he mumbled sleepily. “My excuse for what?”

“For not sleeping. What’s up with you?”

“You know, working side by side with you these last couple of weeks…it’s hard to then separate the friendship and know I’m going to put you in a vest and surround you with snipers and hope this guy doesn’t go off the deep end and try to kill you. They’ve nearly run you off the road, shot at you, blown up your car…”

“Next thing you know, they’d have put cyanide in my martinis.” She tried to make him smile, but Troy was grim-faced.

“I ever tell you I lost my first partner?”

“No,” she whispered. She pulled up a chair.

“Yup. A woman. Great person. Had just found out she was pregnant, too, and was going to ask for a transfer to a desk job. Husband was an awesome guy, completely gaga in love with her. A secret-service agent. They met in D.C. We were all on assignment there. I was an usher in their wedding party.”

“How’d she get killed?”

“We were undercover on a case involving money laundering. Not unlike this one. Drug kingpin, in that case. He somehow got wise to her—she was acting as one of his kids’ nannies. She traveled with him and his family. He had two wives of all things. Some kind of sick fucker. Anyway, he killed her—shot her stone cold in the center of her forehead—right in front of his eleven-year-old son. Told the kid he had to be able to do things like that if he wanted one day to be the kingpin himself.”

“Oh, my God…” Maddie whispered. She patted Troy’s hand.

“I…she didn’t see it coming. None of us did. I was grateful it happened in a split second, but I took a leave of absence for a month. Really had to think about whether I could handle this job.”

“I’m glad you didn’t quit. We might never have met.”

“Yeah…but it never gets easier. Not really. You toughen up. You learn to tell yourself it’s all part of the risks. That we’re all working for the greater good. That it’s the eternal battle of good versus evil, white hats versus black hats. That we’re on the side of the righteous. But if you care about people, you never get used to watching them go out there in a vest.”

“You know, going through all this…it makes me
more
determined to be an agent. I’m really proud that Renee asked me to join.”

“Even if you always have to hide that side of your life from John?”

She nodded. “I told him no more secrets. But I guess I tell myself this is different. Like you said, it’s for a greater cause. But I’m also good at it. I was the one who put the puzzle together. I can do this, Troy. Renee’s faith in me wasn’t misplaced. She was right. I can make a difference in a way I never thought possible.”

“All right then, Agent Pruitt…go wash up and get ready. Today’s the day.”

“We’re going to get him, Troy.”

“Let’s hope you’re right.”

Madison rose and turned to go to the bathroom. Two agents were posted outside the motel room.

“Maddie?”

“Hmm?” She turned her head to look at Troy.

“Do me a favor? Wear this?” He took a silver chain from around his neck, a ball design like the kind for dog tags. Suspended at the bottom was a medal.

“What’s this?”

“It’s Saint Christopher. It was my partner’s. I guess I’m superstitious. I want you to wear it.”

“Then I will,” Madison said. “Thank you, Troy.”

Maddie turned from him, her eyes wet with tears. She’d be damned if she was going to let Troy lose another partner.

T
he plan was to surprise Bing—and Katherine.

Bing was scheduled to speak at the ribbon-cutting ceremony for the waterfront tower property. Katherine—Troy found out by hacking into her scheduler at work—was going to accompany him. Troy had managed to plant a bug on the lapel of Katherine’s suit jacket, which she had left that morning on the back of her desk chair for a few minutes, so the FBI was listening in on their conversations in the limousine.

After the ribbon-cutting, Bing and Katherine were driving to look at a piece of property farther south. It was a fairly open space, also waterfront, and snipers would be posted on the tops of the four warehouses surrounding the area. Once Bing and Katherine got out of the limo, ostensibly to meet the Realtor who’d told them she would be arriving in a Mercedes, Madison would exit the car instead.

In the Mercedes would also be three agents, all crouching. On the way to the meeting site, Madison tested and retested her own wire. She tried to breathe normally, despite the weight of the vest and the way it constricted her rib cage. And she told herself over and over again they were going to get them.

In the vacant lot, the minutes ticked by. Madison saw two vans full of agents, but they were battered old vans that would never arouse suspicion. She reminded herself they were full of men and women ready to protect her at all costs.

Troy reassured her, “Look…he’s expecting a Realtor, not you. Most especially not you. You’re armed, you’re wearing a vest. We’ve got you covered from every angle. The bottom line is, we’re looking for something to hang him and Katherine with—rather than risking that they somehow twist this and pin the whole scheme on your father, or worse, cover their tracks so well they hire a Dream Team defense and get away with it. So we’re looking for a confession of sorts.”

“What if they see you guys?”

“We’ve done this a hundred times before, Madison. Again, they’re not expecting this.
You
see that van.
You
see the guys on the roof. They see an abandoned warehouse area and a piece of property they want to buy. They see the Mercedes of the Realtor they’re meeting.”

Madison inhaled and exhaled a few times. Troy’s cell phone rang.

“Yeah…? Okay. We’re ready.”

He hung up. “They’re five minutes away.” He spoke into his wristband, which had a walkie-talkie built into it. “Five minutes, people. Remember, Madison is going to be in the thick of things. At all costs, she is to be protected. Hold fire unless I give the signal. No one get trigger-happy. Let’s do this. And let’s get them.”

Five minutes later, Bing and Katherine’s long, black limo pulled into the gravel area in the center of the four old warehouse buildings. Their driver parked and leaned his seat back, expecting to wait for the two of them as they toured the land. Madison saw him take out a newspaper and start reading.

Bing and Katherine climbed out from the back of the limo, shut the car door, and were talking. Katherine pointed through the warehouses—you could glimpse the Hudson River through the buildings. Madison knew how their minds worked. They loved the property. Hell, if she wasn’t on the case, she’d buy it herself.

Madison waited until their backs were turned slightly, and then she climbed from the Mercedes after a whispered “Good luck” from Troy. Almost involuntarily, she fingered the medal around her neck.

“Hello, Bing. Katherine…” she said as she stood and they faced the direction of her voice.

“Oh, my God,” Katherine said.

Bing’s face was drained completely of color. “How…? How…?”

Madison shut the door of the Mercedes and took a couple of tentative steps toward them.

“Surprised to see me?”

Neither one of them said a word.

“Yeah…shocking, isn’t it? I just refuse to die. You blew up my limo driver, but miraculously I didn’t get blown to smithereens. I’m still standing.”

Bing glared at Katherine. “I thought you said you’d take care of everything.”

“I did.”

“Well, someone screwed up. It’s obviously not taken care of if we still have the former acting CEO of Pruitt & Pruitt standing right in front of us.”

“Sorry to disappoint.” Madison stared at them coolly. “Katherine…why?” Madison asked. “I’ve sung your praises at work…thought you were absolutely someone who was essential to our organization. Why? I mean, not only did you frame my father, but you were willing to kill me…and Claire?”

“I
was
Claire,” she said, her voice tinged with bitterness. “Years ago. I was the girl who fell in love with Jack Pruitt, who believed in him. Believed in his high ideals. And then he discarded me. Worse, he passed me off to his brother. Like I was something to be traded.”

“So why didn’t you move on, Katherine? Why didn’t you leave the company, find another job?”

“Pruitt & Pruitt was my life.”

“You mean your obsession. Does Bing know?”

“Does Bing know what?” Bing snapped.

“He doesn’t, does he?” Madison suddenly felt more confident. This wasn’t unlike a boardroom meeting, setting the scene, making a case. Manipulating the players if need be.

“I don’t know what?” Bing’s face registered annoyance. Madison knew he hated being in the dark about anything—surprises were his least favorite thing in the world. They once gave him a surprise fiftieth birthday party—and at the Plaza, no less—and he didn’t speak to Jack or Madison for a month afterward.

“Nothing. It’s nothing.” Katherine waved her hand in the air dismissively. “Ignore her.”

“Oh, no…it’s something, all right. Why don’t
you
tell him, Katherine? You tell him.”

“Tell me what? What is she talking about? This is madness. Get to the point.”

“Do you know Katherine’s real name?”

“Of course I do. Katherine Gould.”

“No, no, no, Uncle Bing…” Madison was mocking him, inciting his fury further. “The name on her birth certificate. The name she was
born
with. The name she had when she went to the courthouse. To watch her father’s trial. Poor little immigrant girl with her kerchief on. Thick accent. Ugly black shoes. Hand-me-downs. Tell him, Katherine. Tell him all about it. Or should I say Katarina?”

Katherine Gould stared with pure hatred at Madison. “Shut up, you pathetic bitch. You spoiled, spoiled, worthless girl.”

“Guess it’ll be up to me to clue in poor stupid Bing. That’s why you’re not CEO—or won’t be for long. Too gullible. Don’t have the temperament needed to have a position of that power.”

“Shut up!” Katherine shrieked. “Just shut up, now!”

“Her real name, Uncle Bing, is Katarina Karaspov.”

Bing didn’t react—not at first. It took a second for the name to seep into his brain. Madison watched it, almost as if watching a movie in slow motion. Then she finally saw the recognition dawn on him.

He turned to Katherine. “What? You’re…the…the daughter of that beast who killed my baby brother?”

“My father didn’t kill anyone. He was railroaded by the system. By a system that couldn’t see past his thick tongue, his accent, his ugly black shoes, like she just said. A system set up to revere people like the Pruitts and despise people like the Karaspovs. Immigrants. Use us like workhorses, then turn on us in an instant.”

“But he killed my brother. He…burned him.”

“He didn’t. He wasn’t capable of it. He turned that child over to the men he worked for. It was supposed to be a clean job. They were supposed to give him to a nursemaid—to his own former nanny to care for him. Hell, she loved him more than his own stupid mother. She was too busy with her bridge club to even tuck her children in at night.”

Bing’s face was pale, and he had broken out in a sweat. “I can’t breathe,” he said, clutching at his throat.

“My father took the fall for his partners in crime, in return for enough money for me to go to college, for my mother to buy a house. But I knew he was innocent. And though I was the little immigrant girl, I made sure I got straight A’s, that I worked two jobs, that I had the ‘right clothes,’ the right look, the right hairstyle. And I spent years—long relentless years—researching the Pruitts. I know more about the lot of you than you know about yourselves.”

“So you went for the job with my father with malice aforethought.”

“Absolutely. And along the way, he fell in love with me. And I became enamored of him. I changed my plan from ruining the Pruitts to the ultimate irony—becoming their matriarch. Marrying into them in the ultimate realization of the American dream.”

Madison looked at Katherine’s face. She was flushed, heady with the dream she’d once embraced.

“Then he threw me out like I was worthless. Or worse, old. I saw him going for younger women. Women who weren’t even fit to converse with him, let alone share his bed. Then that Claire…for God’s sake, she was
your
age. That was too much to take.”

“But what about me?” Bing asked, horrified. “What about me, us. Our dream?”

“You’re so stupid. Really…do you think you hold a candle to me? You’ve never been bright enough to compete with your brother—or me, for that matter.”

“But we were going to run Pruitt & Pruitt together.”

“You’re a fool. A stupid old fool,” Katherine said. “Men really never outgrow thinking with their pants, Madison. They’re not like women. Not like us.”

Madison realized Katherine had said more than enough for the FBI, but she needed to know if Bing was a pathetic patsy or a full participant, especially where the murders were concerned.

“Bing…okay, I get that maybe you were jealous of my father—had a sense of brotherly competition, but…why go along with her plan? You have enough wealth for a lifetime and then some. Why? I don’t understand.”

“I was so tired of the attention he got, Madison. Him and his
golden-girl offspring,
while me, I had two ex-wives and no children.” His voice was laced with a nasty sarcasm. “Katherine’s too old now. I guess I…she came to me with a plan. To increase my wealth tenfold through working with money that we could hide offshore. No one would know. And at the same time, we were creating a set of books that would topple your father’s reign as CEO. I’d never heard a more perfect plan in my entire life. It was sheer brilliance.”

“Bing—” Madison shook her head sadly “—my father loves you. You’re his only brother. He feels protective toward you.”

“Please…don’t patronize me,” he snapped. “Once he came along, he was all my mother cared about. He got the attention, he got the love, and I was shunted aside, this ugly reminder of William’s death. Then my father chose
him
as the heir to the throne of Pruitt & Pruitt. He chose
him
to lead the family into the new century. Me? I was an afterthought.”

“Bing, you run a huge part of the company. You’ve been on the cover of
Fortune
and been profiled in the
Wall Street Journal.
You’re delusional.”

“Would a delusional person have so perfect a plan? And it would have worked…”

“Except for Claire.”

“Except for Claire. So we had to get rid of her.”

“Bing,” Madison shook her head. “But kill her? How?”

“Katherine and I figured out she was snooping around. So it was a preemptive strike. I told Claire that I knew Jack was crooked, and I had proof. If she met me at the warehouse, I would give her the evidence. Once she got there, friends of Katherine’s erased her. End of story.”

Madison was stunned. Claire had gone there knowing the evidence might point to Jack. But she was willing to hunt for the truth, just as Madison was. Her admiration for her friend’s courage grew.

“And me? Getting rid of me?”

“If your father had married Claire, as was his plan, they would have had babies, and you, my dear, would have found your fortune divided many more ways—maybe even eradicated entirely. But once Claire was gone, I realized that if Katherine could arrange for your demise, too, then Jack would be completely and utterly destroyed. Only putting him in prison for illegal accounting practices would be the cherry on top.”

Madison was chilled. The two of them were stark raving mad, and now she had enough evidence on both of them.

“Well, your plan failed, you two. I’m still alive.”

Madison started to back up to the Mercedes, but Katherine pulled a gun from her purse.

“Sorry, my little blond heiress. Now it’s your turn.”

Suddenly, SWAT teams made their presence known. A male voice shouted from the rooftop, “Freeze. Put the gun down…you’re surrounded.”

The Mercedes’s doors opened, and out stepped Troy and his team, their automatic weapons drawn and trained on Bing and Katherine. At the same moment, Bing grabbed Madison and thrust her in front of him as a shield.

“Hold on, everybody,” Troy said, holding his arms up and urging calm.

Katherine trained her gun on Maddie’s head—right at her temple.

“If anyone moves one step closer, she’s dead.”

“Now…you do that, and you’re in a heap more shit, Katherine. That’s a capital offense…needle-in-the-arm kind of crime…” Troy spoke calmly, in a measured voice. “We don’t want this turning into a bloodbath.”

Madison tried to weigh her options, and found they were rather slim at the moment. If the SWAT teams could take out Katherine, she felt she could handle Bing, but the gun butt pressed to her temple was limiting any choices she had.

“I’d rather die right here than go to prison like my father,” Katherine said. “And taking a Pruitt brat with me will only make my demise truly spectacular and worth it.”

“No one’s killing anyone here, Katherine,” Troy said, inching his way forward.

Katherine and Bing, meanwhile, were inching their way backward with Madison.

Suddenly, Madison’s heel caught in a small rut in the gravel-and-concrete lot. As she fell and lost her balance, Katherine herself fell backward for a second, which was all Troy’s SWAT team needed. They shot her what seemed to Madison like a hundred times, and her body shook from the impact of dozens of bullets striking her like a target at target practice.